The Renown line's shells are finished with silver sealer ( a Gretsch thing that improves the sound through resonance and sealing the pores of the wood). Other than that, the Catalina series lacks - A. Finished interiors on the shells and B. good heads. Heres what I did. I dis- assembled all the drums and sanded the interiors with 300 grit paper so that they were baby skin smooth. Then I sealed the interiors with Teak oil, applying several coats until the interiors were sealed and had a nice low sheen. The sealer, although not the silver paint ,that Gretsch uses on the Renown line, accomplished the same thing. That being, smooth sealed resonant interiors, that improve the sound. I then added Evans G2 over G1'heads and tuned them up.

I like the idea of sealing the interior with sealer or Teak Oil, what difference did you find in the sound, lower? warmer ?

For those of you interested in modifying your drums (specifically wrapping your drums) I have written a short blog about how to wrap your drums, and will be adding more to it very soon. Find it at www.makedrums.com/blog Enjoy!

I've been involved for the last couple of months in piecing together my dream kit with used Yamaha Recording Custom drums. Reasons are 1) cost of new vs used and 2) I prefer the older drums of the RC line. I decided I would buy the exact sizes I wanted, regardless of color, and refinish as needed. I'd be going for a black look, thinking that I could re-lacquer odd colors to black. I did research before I started buying drums, and I thought I could pull it off.

It worked. I lucked in to finding most of the drums in black, and had to refinish 3 drums out of 9 that I bought: 8, 10 and 12" toms. The 12 was gray, the 10 red and the 8 white. I won't elaborate on the process, unless someone is really interested. If so, just post a reply and I'll give more details. For now, I'll just say that I carefully used a hi-gloss black lacquer paint in spray cans. Don't try this unless you have a very well ventilated area, like a garage, etc. The fumes of this paint are potent. And the air temperature needs to be reasonably warm for the paint to set-up properly.

You can see the results. Not bad for a first timer. I don't have a photo of the 12" tom before I started, so you see just the 10" and 8" before and after, and the 12" after in both shots.

I play a fairly high-end set of Yamaha Birch Custom Absoutes and just added a Maple Custom Absolute bass drum. The set is vintage natural matte-finish, but the BD is gloss - so it doesn't match. I'm thinking about stripping off the gloss and adding a light stain. What else do I need to do?

My worry is about the stripping agent leaking into the shell and compromising the sound. I also know zero about sealing the shells, if that's necessary, or how to protect the bearing edges.

Use painters tape and seal the edges and holes. This is the 8" tom in my pictures below, after taping and applying primer.

Its always a great idea to try a test case before tackling the real drum you want to work on. If you can find a beat-up lacquered drum to test out your ideas, you'll have some experience before you start in on the kick drum.

Did you put tape over the badge? And, did the finish end up rough around the badge?

My set has the matte finish; can you point me in the right direction for a matte lacquer?

Thanks,
Mike

I could write a book on this topic, so its a bit tough to give you all of the details, here. You have 2 major issues: 1) How to remove the current finish 2) How to apply the new finish.

Removal: Even if you attempt to use paint stripper, you're going to need to sand the shell after, to make sure you have it down to bare wood and any residue from the stipper is gone. Wipe the whole thing down with a wet rag after you sand. Use finer grades of sandpaper as you go. The other option is to sand from the beginning and not use stripper. You would need to use a heavier sand paper to start with to get the lacquer off. However, you need to be real careful with sanding to keep everything nice and smooth. Stay away from the bearing edges.

Yes, I put tape over the badge and carefully removed it once the lacquer was fully dried. I took a sharp pocket knife and carefully scored (ran it around) the edges of the badge, to make sure the tape would pull off from the new lacquer. If you do this too soon, you can pull the paint off with it.

However, in your case, it sounds like your kit is stained, not a lacquer like the kick drum. Lacquer is a high gloss paint, not a satin stain. The new kick could also have clear lacquer over stain. Why don't you post some photos? So, once you have it down to the bare shell, you're going to be staining, not re-lacquering as I did. Correct? Staining should be easier than painting. The trick will be to try and match the color and hue of the stain.

I'm sure you can find tips on the web about staining drums or wood in general. If the drums match, except the new new kick is glossy and the other drums are satin, the other option is to just leave it the way it is and avoid all of this. Posting some photos would help.

Hey!
I'm thinking about painting my shells on a project (yes, its cheap...and currently has a wrap) kit. Buddy owns a paint shop so I just have to buy the paint and have the tools ;)
+
My big question is, while I'm doing this I'm thinking about making my bass's (is that right?) virgins, but does anyone know what's best to fill in the holes, or something of the sort?

Also, any confirmed finishes to make the paint glossy? Just an auto paint gloss?

Thanks!

If your buddy owns a paint shop, he can probably adivse you. The challenges I see:

I assume you are removing the wrap. You don't know what kind of can of worms that will open up. If the wrap is fully glued, that will be a job. If its only spot glued, you're in better shape. Remove the wrap carefully. You want to avoid chippng the shells. I would fill in small holes with wood filler. You most likely will need to sand the shells prior to painting, after you've filled in imperfections. Use gradually finer grades of sandpaper.

Your buddy will probably recommend using a couple of coates of primer as a base. I believe you could use any automotive lacquer paint to get a glossy finish. He probably has some metallic paints that would look very nice on a kit. You can also have a coat of clear applied as a final coat, for higher gloss.

As far as making your bass drum a virgin, the holes that would be created by removing a tom mount could be pretty large. You'd probably not want to fill that in with wood filler. If you could have someone fabricate a plate for you to mount in place of the tom mount, that might be the thing to do. Here's a thread on the topic of plates for Yamaha kick drums:

I have 3 mis-matched pieces that I'm going to wrap. But 2 of the pieces have chrome that has not been well cared for. Other than paying the small fortune chrome shops want, is there an effective technique to use on the pits and blemishes?

I did know a little about the painting, I've worked with him in the past. My main deal was dealing with the giant tom arm holes. I saw that thread for the plates, which kicked some major arse, but the guy went belly up... Hence me being here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by psycho

Chrome Blemmishes.

I have 3 mis-matched pieces that I'm going to wrap. But 2 of the pieces have chrome that has not been well cared for. Other than paying the small fortune chrome shops want, is there an effective technique to use on the pits and blemishes?

Many thanks!

Mike (Psycho)

What chrome pieces? Hoops, bolts, etc can all be replaced for pretty darn cheap if that's the case.

I did know a little about the painting, I've worked with him in the past. My main deal was dealing with the giant tom arm holes. I saw that thread for the plates, which kicked some major arse, but the guy went belly up... Hence me being here.

I get the feeling he can still make the plates. It sounds like he just can't get anything printed on them, like he was with the Yamaha logos. Why don't you contact him? Filling in large holes is going to be a headache. I believe his user ID is SoCalMike. I've purchased a couple of things from him.

I built a piccolo snare using parts from www.amdrumparts.com. It is on the right.
The drum on the left was a light stained maple snare that I am making part of a Bumble Bee Bop kit. I sanded enough to get the clear down to a dull finish and then used spray paint. I used fine line painters tape to put on the black and then the yellow stripes. I may still clear it. Not sure yet.

Attached Images

__________________
Less than 300 days until retirement.
Gretsch Renown

That bumble-bee finish looks great, GD. Post pics when you finish the kit. Just love yellow drums, so this finish is very cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GRUNTERSDAD

I built a piccolo snare using parts from www.amdrumparts.com. It is on the right.
The drum on the left was a light stained maple snare that I am making part of a Bumble Bee Bop kit. I sanded enough to get the clear down to a dull finish and then used spray paint. I used fine line painters tape to put on the black and then the yellow stripes. I may still clear it. Not sure yet.

I built a piccolo snare using parts from www.amdrumparts.com. It is on the right.
The drum on the left was a light stained maple snare that I am making part of a Bumble Bee Bop kit. I sanded enough to get the clear down to a dull finish and then used spray paint. I used fine line painters tape to put on the black and then the yellow stripes. I may still clear it. Not sure yet.

Nice job. Doing it yourself and having it work out, is the best feeling. Great name too: Bumble Bee Bop!

This wasn't so much a modification as a refinishing project. I started buying individual Sonor Force 2001 pieces over a period of a year to make a "throw in the car" practice kit. Ended up with four pieces: two in cherry, one in natural, and one in black finish. Stripped them down and repainted them to match. Did a blue "flick" job over white and then shot it with about five coats of clear coat. Has a look between glass and satin. I ended up playing this kit more than I thought and after three years the paint job has endured pretty well. Only one chip and that was from a pretty good hit from slapping the bass drum with my bass pedal while breaking it down.

This is my refinish project. I have a 7 piece Ludwig Accent CS (entry level) but I like them and decided to refinish them in mahogany tones. I used Cabot Brown Mahogany followed by a 2nd lighter coat of Minwax Bombay Mahogany. 2 coats of polyeurothane and I think that should suffice. I wanted a rough natural look, but not so rough that it looked sloppy.
My goal was to make the kit look as though somebody had made it out of wall paneling.

I removed the piano black wrap which thankfully was only glued at the seams. I then used "goof Off" to remove the glue, and sanded the shells with 220 grit sandpaper.

I was able to create a "virgin" bass drum by adding mesh tape to the inside of the bass drum where the tom mount holes were drilled. I then filled it all in with wood putty and sanded that down.

After that, I applied the 1st coat of the cabot stain, let it dry, and lightly spot sanded it to reduce the depth of color in some areas while leaving the stain alone in other areas.
I then applied the 2nd coat of minwax bombay mahogany and then 2 coats of poly. I also added new grommets to all the toms and the snare. The bass head grommet actually stayed intact enough to reuse. The pics below show the process as well as the before and after pics.

I've been involved for the last couple of months in piecing together my dream kit with used Yamaha Recording Custom drums. Reasons are 1) cost of new vs used and 2) I prefer the older drums of the RC line. I decided I would buy the exact sizes I wanted, regardless of color, and refinish as needed. I'd be going for a black look, thinking that I could re-lacquer odd colors to black. I did research before I started buying drums, and I thought I could pull it off.

It worked. I lucked in to finding most of the drums in black, and had to refinish 3 drums out of 9 that I bought: 8, 10 and 12" toms. The 12 was gray, the 10 red and the 8 white. I won't elaborate on the process, unless someone is really interested. If so, just post a reply and I'll give more details. For now, I'll just say that I carefully used a hi-gloss black lacquer paint in spray cans. Don't try this unless you have a very well ventilated area, like a garage, etc. The fumes of this paint are potent. And the air temperature needs to be reasonably warm for the paint to set-up properly.

You can see the results. Not bad for a first timer. I don't have a photo of the 12" tom before I started, so you see just the 10" and 8" before and after, and the 12" after in both shots.

first off, very nice kit dude, and i have a question. is the shell of your snare copper???

Here's the recent job I've done on a DW 6x12 snare. The "psyché" blue finish ply got me seasick as it was impossible to focus on it properly. It looks way better in honey gold laquer finish. Pix will have a better speech:

Hey guys, so i have taken the leap and started to re wrap my drums. Being a remo mastertouch it does not have a woodgrain finish under the original wrap so i have gone for a maple veneer to get the look i am after. I have also used an american walnut strip veneer along the bottom of the drum but sadly I could only get it in 1" strips as i was wanting 2". It is all looking pretty good so far with the 14" tom i have started on but i still have to add the stain and matt clearcoat plus a bit more sanding and filling of a few little gaps as the veneer split upon application :( apart from that i think my kit will look like new once im done. I will even polish up the lugs and get some new hoops as some are a bit rusty and warped.

Hi, everyone.
I have a sonor 3005 kit (piano black) and I really love it, the sound and etc. It's a real workhorse for me.
I was thinking of maybe somekind of updgrade for it- take off the wraps and apply a nice finish, change the hoops to die cast (I want some more focused sound).
The problem is that I don't is it worth to spend additional money on this kit.
Is there any sense in doing such an upgrade for a non-high end kit or should I just save some money and buy something expensive?

alright, so check this out. i've got a cheapie dixon kit, got it for $399 new, came with everything, and had that ugly generic wine red wrap. i got tired of it, so i decided to peel off the wraps and give it a paint job. coolest thing i could think of was a blue VH theme. here's a pic-story:

i've still got the stock cymbals that came with the kit, but everything else sounds much better than it did when it had the wrap on.

I've got a mid 50's slingerland snare that has been, I can only imagine, painted and had sparkles added (there is paint on the inside of the shell, so I doubt that is the original factory finish). I'm looking to sand it down and re-finish it, however there is the small issue of the badge. How should I go about sanding down the shell while keeping the badge on, or even taking the badge off somehow?

This wasn't so much a modification as a refinishing project. I started buying individual Sonor Force 2001 pieces over a period of a year to make a "throw in the car" practice kit. Ended up with four pieces: two in cherry, one in natural, and one in black finish. Stripped them down and repainted them to match. Did a blue "flick" job over white and then shot it with about five coats of clear coat. Has a look between glass and satin. I ended up playing this kit more than I thought and after three years the paint job has endured pretty well. Only one chip and that was from a pretty good hit from slapping the bass drum with my bass pedal while breaking it down.

I am really interested in creating the "60's Oyster" effect on a kit that I'm refinishing. The only problem is I have no idea how to. I am assuming that it involves multiple paints (obvious, I know) but I'm not quite sure how the effect is created. If anyone has any experience in this area please point me in the right direction. What I'm after looks something like this but I'm going in a different direction colour-wise. Maybe some green in there somewhere.

__________________PDP + Zildjian + Evans + Pro Mark

Last edited by dexterbydesign; 10-24-2010 at 11:44 AM.
Reason: forgot a picture.

Does anyone know of anyone who does this work in England (ideally South East) and can make good the holes in a sparkle finish? I want a 12 x 10" tom cut down to a 12 x 9", but want it really well done! CHEERS.

This is actually a follow up post to the one I had written about sealing the interiors of my Gretsch catalina maple"s. After finishing the job I replaced the Evans G2 over G1 coated heads and I was happy with the sound....for a while. I've always been a coated head kinda guy and had the thought in my head that the clear heads were too bright and loud. Well after a number of months and a lot of reading I eventually changed the heads out for coated G1's over G-plus clears. WOW I thought. The G2's, being two ply heads, were really muffling the true tone of the shells. The use of the G-plus heads as reso's was an even better Idea, since they increased the resonance by 100 percent. There have been a lot of threads on this and you would think that this combo just wouldn't work, but the G plus heads are a single ply 10ml head that actually vibrates more than it's thinner , more used, reso head. This worked for a while until I decided to take the plunge and change all the batter heads to G1 clear. Wow again. The sealed interiors and the clear batters were the combination I was looking for all this time. What a beautiful Open resonant clear maple sound. Just thought you Gretsch cat owners would be motivated by this .

I am really interested in creating the "60's Oyster" effect on a kit that I'm refinishing. The only problem is I have no idea how to. I am assuming that it involves multiple paints (obvious, I know) but I'm not quite sure how the effect is created. If anyone has any experience in this area please point me in the right direction. What I'm after looks something like this but I'm going in a different direction colour-wise. Maybe some green in there somewhere.

I need help with my 71 Ludwig kit. I've had the bearing edges re-cut years ago - slight improvement, but not enough.

For years I've lived with the 22 X 14 inch bass drum's bop feel when the beater hits the batter head.

I'd like to know if I can have the bearing edge on the bass drum re-cut again 2 X 45 degree angles. Right now the outside bearing edge is too rounded - I want less wood contact on the head - like on the newer drums.

I find that the tuning and mainly feel is inconsistent. Has anyone had any experience cutting these older bearing edges on vintage kits?

OR, I'll take all the black oyster pearl wrap of all 3 drums, and just buy a Keller Maple bass drum 22 X 18.

Does anybody know where i can get some Pearl badges from? I am refinishing a kit and the current badges aren't really badges but aluminium pieces that bent to hell when taking the wraps off the drums. Any help would be appreciated.

I know I have sinned, but I couldn't help it. This drum was in bad shape.

I picked up a 1966 Supra that was in worse shape than I thought. The rims were bad, the shell was scraped and scratched, the wires kind of funky, etc. The worst thing was-the chrome on the bottom bearing edge had a bunch of deep chips. I don't know how this could have happened, unless some previous owner had used it as a timbale, without the bottom rim-on a snare stand without rubber ends. So I decided I had to refurbish this drum, but didn't want to spend any real money on it. Its a players drum, so I didn't care about trying to 'restore' it to original.

First, I took some course sand paper and sanded the bottom bearing edge down to the aluminum. Once it was smooth, sanded with finer grade paper. Sanded the entire shell with medium, then fine paper. Painted it with some Rustoleum 'Hammered' copper spray paint. This paint hides imperfections, since it applies a hammered looking finish. Ditched the rims, and installed rims I had from a 1980's Yamaha Recording Custom snare (I had put wood rims on that drum). The RC rims are about the same thickness as the original Supra rims. Put a new Evans hazy 300 snare side head and a set of Puresound Blasters. I left the muffler out, as I'm not huge on internal mufflers.

The drum now not only sounds great, but looks great as well. Very happy with how it turned out. Perfect drum to take out.

One of my full set-ups.
One of a smaller stature.
All my drums are wrapped in matching tapestry. 26', 22', 18', 2-16", 13", 12", 10", 13" and 14" snares.

Hey, I'm currently working on a setup similar to your second kit. I'm using a 16x18" Floor Tom from an abandoned Lazer Kit as both an 'upright' cocktail kit-style bass drum and a floor tom.

How did you negotiated the sound between both? i stretched a small cloth along the bottom head so that I could have a more muffled bass sound, but it has sort of killed the tom's sustain, but that could probably be a matter of changing out the heads... they're brandless.

How does drilling a hole in the side like I can see in your pic help? does it help amplify the bass?

Hey guys I am about ready to refinish my drums and I need some help. I want to do a sparkle finish in either green or purple. I dont want a wrap, I want to paint the drums. Can anyone tell me 1) what would be the best paint for the drums and 2) how to make a sparkle finish?

I'm not too worried about a fantastic job, because this is an old cheap set that I want to get some practice on customizing and whatnot. This is something I wanna learn to do and this is a good kit for me to start on. If this was a much more expensive kit I would take your advice for sure though haha

I'm not too worried about a fantastic job, because this is an old cheap set that I want to get some practice on customizing and whatnot. This is something I wanna learn to do and this is a good kit for me to start on. If this was a much more expensive kit I would take your advice for sure though haha

Go get Krylon.
I forget the name, but type in Krylon sparkle paint and you'll get it. The paint is flakes of sparkly color!